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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27203645">Sense Memory</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBraillebarian/pseuds/TheBraillebarian'>TheBraillebarian</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Sense Memories [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Metalocalypse (Cartoon)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blood and Gore, Gen, Suicide Attempt, Vomiting, poop joke kind of</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:00:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,063</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27203645</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBraillebarian/pseuds/TheBraillebarian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Magnus gets dragged back from death's door. What a mess.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Sense Memories [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2016617</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Sense Memory</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Kinda just wanted to write something visceral. This is the set-up for some other works I'm planning. Toki has never used his powers to heal before, lucky Magnus!</p><p>It's been something like two years since I wrote anything to post. Let me know if any of it needs clarifying! :)</p><p>Music<br/><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sfq38cZszQ">Lorn - Acid Rain (Metal Version) || Artificial Fear</a></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Blood bubbles and pops from his lips, thick dark gobs oozing into the dirt. Vaguely Magnus thinks it odd that he can taste it, feel the viscous spit on his tongue when everything else has gone so cold. Far away, past the metal reek in his nose, it smells like shit and isn't that fitting? That he's shit himself before he can even die? Perfect. He would laugh past the knife in one lung if he could. At least he's fallen on his side. Dead in a puddle of shit and blood with his ass in the air would have been a bit much.</p><p>A boot comes down in front of his face. His good eye rolls up to the figure shrouded in darkness and he would know that silhouette anywhere. Fuck.</p><p>Toki crouches like he's settling in to watch something interesting. Magnus offers a weak smile and burps out another mass of black from deep in his guts. Maybe watching his torturer die will bring the guy some closure. Magnus can't hurt him ever again and he'd want that satisfaction if it were the other way around.</p><p>A hand pushes him onto his back, his own limp and crusted fingers falling away from the knife in his gut. The motion jars his wreck of a sternum and he gurgles around the hole, choking. Maybe he'll drown if he has enough time left. Cool, cool. Warm, strong hands cup his cheeks. The dark eating away at his vision cannot subsume those eyes, two burning blue stars.</p><p>"Nos Magnus," the voice is a whisper that roars through his head. "Yous don'ts gets to leaves."</p><p>Fire grips him for the second time this night. He'd felt it before, snagging on his consciousness when the band had at last been reunited. It had given him the strength to slide down that pipe in his chest, let it fall and crack ribs on its way out of him. He'd been given a choice then and he knew what he had to do. Dragging himself away on numbed legs he had gone to make his willing sacrifice.</p><p>Now the fire is swallowing him from the inside and Magnus does not get to choose anything. The twin blue stars bleed into red, eating his soul atom by atom. He gags and his own cold hand yanks the knife free. Air whistles past his guts and sizzles through the hole in his lung. He can feel the knife going in again though it is clutched in his black crusted hand, inert at his side. Where the reality of his slipshod atonement had been a cold, wrong slice through his existence, this is a slow and boiling thing. It sears his organs at the cells, cauterizing wounds and shoving bits of filth through the holes on the way out. Dried blood and dirt bubble from the gash under his ribs, flaking down his skin and dusting his ruined jacket. The hole in his lung closes with a sharp sucking tear. At last Magnus screams.</p><p>Blood and bile and flakes of rust vomit past his lips as he howls. He can't move, only watch through bulging eyes as Death himself rips that last release from him. Some distant part of Magnus knows that there aren't nerves in some of these burning places, certainly not in the normal hollows between his slithering organs, but he feels everything. His fingers claw helplessly at the dirt, numb feet twitching, as he screams his throat raw, new flecks of bright red peppering his teeth. Toki's fingers on his cheeks are bars of white hot metal lancing through him, pinning his consciousness in place like an insect writhing on a needle.</p><p>Magnus boils and shrieks until his heart beats strong in his chest once more. The world fades back in around Toki's dark shape, two blue eyes against a sky peppered with stars. A thin cry escapes Magnus' lips. He can't feel his legs, every breath saws past his broken ribs, and he's going to live, god damn him, he's going to live. Strong arms lift him like he weighs nothing. It hurts terribly but in such a mundane, ordinary way.</p><p>"No," Magnus groans, blood dribbling into Toki's hair.</p><p>"Shh," the other man says -- is he still a man? "Yous goings to bes alrights."</p><p>"No..."</p><p>Every step jars the gaping hole in his chest, the sheered off ribs, and he's going to live. There's probably shit in his pants and he's going to be okay. Magnus thinks he's crying but it's hard to tell past the grime on his face.</p><p>"Holy shit," he feels Pickles' voice in the orange glare of a street light. "Did ya do that to 'im, Toki?"</p><p>"Nos. I tells yous later."</p><p>Smell of weed and cheap beer tickling his nose, an old and comfortable thing, as Pickles leans in close. "Jesus. He dead?"</p><p>"Nos," the word is stern and echoes in the pit of Magnus' soul. He retches and pukes, the acid burning the hole in his chest.</p><p>"Aww fuck! My shoes!" Magnus smiles weakly at Pickles' indignant yowl. "Oh, oh dood. Mags. Did ya shit yerself?" A wicked, gleeful laugh. "Oh I am never letting ya live this down!"</p><p>Magnus tries to raise his middle finger but his free hand is unaccountably stiff and heavy.</p><p>"Oh, whoa. No. Yer not keepin' that," Pickles plucks the knife from his clawed grip where it has partially stuck to the skin with clotted blood.</p><p>"Keeps that," Toki says.</p><p>"Yeah... Feels kinda...ya know?"</p><p>Toki nods.</p><p>Through a delirium of pain Magnus can see three familiar shapes. Nathan is a pressure in his skull, a knot in his mangled belly.</p><p>"Can't believe you're bringing this dildo back with us," he growls. "The screaming was pretty brutal."</p><p>Sensation begins to fade in and out, his world ebbing into a sensory patchwork. Footsteps crunching on gravel. Sodium lights flaring past his drooping eyelids, orange, black, orange. Gnawing pain that skitters past his flagging consciousness into a weak cough. Toki's heart beating against one shoulder, an anchor to whatever life holds for him now. The sound of a sliding door slamming shut, sick lurch of the Dethcopter leaving earth. Voices murmuring into the distance. A cautious breath being drawn.</p><p>"Dude," Nathan rumbles. "Did he shit himself?" A dark chuckle. "I am never letting him live this down."</p><p>Nothing.</p>
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